


Phantom Pains

by morioriohno



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Amputation, Blood and Gore, F/M, Minor Character Death, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 15:23:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11164668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morioriohno/pseuds/morioriohno
Summary: RvB Angst War entry, prompted by goodluckdetective on tumblr as "What happened to Siris?"





	Phantom Pains

**PHANTOM PAINS**

... 

_Wouldn't it have been nice if we could've just met like two normal people in a coffeeshop?_

... 

_"That one."_

Mason Wu wakes up to pain. Well, pain is too generic of a term. Mason wakes up in abject, indescribable agony, so blinding that it's the only thing he can process as he is violently ripped to consciousness. 

_"He's the superior officer here. Let's make an example of him."_

His mind, stunned by its rude awakening from sleep, struggles to form coherent thoughts, but one thing is clear. " _M-Megan_ ," he gasps, the first word that comes to him, the _only_ word. His hand reaches out for her side of the bed and he grabs her arm through the linen, shaking her awake, like he's done so many times before.

Megan is up in seconds, her hand taking his. This routine is muscle memory by now for both of them. Megan sits up and her strong hands help him upright, ripping the bed covers off them both. 

_"Teach the next generation, so they will never dare cross us."_

"One to ten," she demands.

"It's—it's nine."

Her eyes widen. " _Nine_?" 

Somehow Mason finds it in him to nod. "Nine."

Mason grabs tighter to her hand as she pulls him to his feet, and an agonized shout escapes him before he can catch it. _Fuck_. It's been bad before, but never this bad. Never a nine.  

_Hands the size of his head drag him in front of what remains of his squad, gunfire clattering uselessly against the walls of the chamber. It's closed off, the UNSC will never make it. His allies will never make it in time—_  

He collapses into the chair beside their bed and Megan is already there with the first aid kit. His hands are slick with sweat but he still grabs tight to the chair's armrests as she rolls up his left pant leg as far as it can go and immediately gets to work on the screws holding the prosthetic in place.

_"You're going to be fine," Siris assures his squad frantically, knowing that it's a lie and that they'll never believe him. "All of you, you're going to make it out of here, you understand me?"_

_Scared eyes stare back at him, so many scared cadets, not knowing what's going to happen but having a pretty good idea._  

Megan's voice is forming words but Mason can't hear them, can only get the vague feeling that the words are meant to be a comfort. She's trying to ease the pain, to make it bearable. If he could hear it over the screaming pain shooting from his toes all the way through his spine, maybe he'd be fine.

_"Hold him."_

His breathing gets funny, and he knows that it's just the memory, but he can't help it and the pain is too much and he can't breathe, all he can see is _them._

The last screw comes loose and Megan pulls away the prosthetic from what remains of his leg, laying it down on the floor beside her. But the pain is still there, excruciating, an inescapable fact of life. 

_Two of the Covenant soldiers grab his arms and pin them behind his back as they drag him to his feet, one of them ripping his helmet off and forcing him to look up at the ceiling. The air smells of blood, mostly human, blood and ashes._

_A bombshell goes off outside the door and the chamber shakes, but the walls hold. Someone cries for help. They'll never make it in time._

Mason's fingers shake as he grabs hold of Megan's free hand and doesn't let go. "No."

"Mason, I'm right here," Megan promises, her hand squeezing back as she rummages through the kit. "I'm right here, babe, I'm right here."

" _Megan_ ," he whispers, his determination giving way to fear like fire eroding paper. "Not like this."

_Siris doesn't see it coming but he feels the burn of the plasma even before it touches his skin and he screams as one of the Covenant soldiers slowly, tediously, drags a plasma blade through his left leg just above the knee. Armor does nothing. Every nerve is instantly on fire, every inch of his leg shrieks in agony as his muscles asphyxiate and are one by one separated entirely from the mass of his body, and his leg spasms violently until the last tendon is cut and just like that his leg is gone._

_The pain is blinding, burning, unending. Siris lets out another strangled cry as they drop him to the floor, his cadets yelling and screaming, horrified, and before he can make sense of his surroundings the Covenant soldier stabs the blade down into what's left of his leg, deep enough to completely pin him to the ground. He screams again, more desperate, as the blood rapidly drains away and he can feel his consciousness fading with every second._

Mason screams and thrashes against the chair, but Megan is ready and her hand has left his and her strong arm is holding him back. With her other hand, she pulls a thin syringe from the kit and unceremoniously stabs it into the stump of his leg, unloading the entire contents into his bloodstream.

_"Know that we spared him," one of the soldiers says, addressing Siris's squad as Siris bleeds out before them. "We could've killed you all easily. Next time, do not expect such mercy—"_

_One of the cadets gets to her knees and reaches for a gun, the ultimate mistake, but Siris can't warn her in time and all three of the soldiers open fire on her at once and she topples, dead, all he remembers is her name, Sarah Young, her name was Sarah Young, his cadet is dead because he couldn't warn her in time._

The sedative in the syringe kicks immediately and just moments later he can feel the pain start to change. Second by second, the pain subsides, enough for him to take in the world around him. The moonlight is low in the window, almost gone.

Time. It's late, too late for this. He's going to wake her.

Another word comes to him, another important one. Mason grabs hold of Megan and forces out, " _Sarah_."

"In a minute," Megan starts to protest. "She sleeps through ev—" 

Mason gently pushes her towards the nursery before she can finish the sentence. "Go. I can...I can handle myself for a little while," he whispers 

“…And you’re sure?”

He nods.

“I’ve never had to use that large a dose on you before. You’re not feeling sick or anything? Feverish?”

“No, no. I’ll be fine, I promise." 

“I just thought that with an attack this bad, it’s possible, I should run some tests, but maybe there’s some nerve de—“

“ _Megan._  Go check on Sarah.”

“…Okay."

For the first time in the past minute, time moves as it should. Megan sighs and stands, planting a lingering kiss on his forehead before leaving the room. 

Mason groans in pain and leans back, wiping the sweat off of his face with his shirt. After a couple passes, the shirt is soaked and he pulls it off, throwing it next to the prosthetic on the floor. 

_A wall explodes and the Covenant soldiers scatter—and time makes no sense because it's only been seconds but what feels like years later there is a hand on his shoulder and someone is roughly pulling him upright._

_"Come on, you son of a bitch," she grunts, wrapping a hand around his torso._ _She makes it to one foot before someone grabs his other side and together they manage to pull him up onto a stretcher._

Sarah's wail from the nursery grabs his attention over the pain, and he turns towards the room, but he's barely looked to the doorway before she falls silent. Quietly, he can hear Megan's soothing voice as she lulls Sarah back to sleep, the only sound in the entire apartment.

Fuck. It takes hours for Sarah to get to bed. By the time she's sleeping again, they'll have to get up for work.

But if anyone can get her to sleep, it's Megan.

_Two hands squeeze his, warm and strong, and there she is above him, and the glint of the light hits her visor just perfectly enough to see her through the sheet of glass. Through her visor he sees horror, then sadness, then understanding and then a brazen determination, all in the space of seconds._

_She moves and the reflection returns to the glass. "I need a medevac team at the training base," she says into her radio, her hands still holding on. "We've got wounded, one dead cadet, and one of the corporals needs immediate surgery. Corporal—" She pulls his dog tags forward in her fingers. "Wu. Mason Wu, pull up biocoms ASAP and have my station ready. Hold tight, Mason. You're going to be alright, okay?"_

"Mason," she calls from the hallway, lightly, just barely audible. "You alright?"

"Yeah," he breathes, only partly lying. The pain has faded substantially, from something inescapable to a mild pulsing ache, just beneath the surface of what remains of his leg. Nothing more than usual. But the memories are harder to drug into submission. "Yeah, I'll...I'll manage."

Megan walks back through the doorway, carrying Sarah in a blanket between her arms. Somehow, the baby's already back to sleep.

Mason watches as Megan quietly pulls a folding chair up beside him and sits, then shifts herself so one hand is on the baby, and the other is entwined with his fingers.

_He blacks out. He thinks he blacks out. When he comes to, he's moving through a metal corridor and they're wheeling him towards something, and there are all kinds of wires and tubes coming out of him and especially in his leg, there's so many wires in his leg, but he opens his eyes and she's there above him, no helmet, the same medic from before._

_She says something and Mason can't make sense of the words but he latches on to every one of them. He could die in his moment and as long as he hears this voice, he'd be fine with that._

The two of them sit together in silence for minutes, long enough that Mason thinks that maybe she's asleep too _,_ like the baby in her arms, but right on cue her hand squeezes his.

"So," she says, dully. "Nine."

Mason is silent, and she turns to look at him.

"It's never been that bad before, Mason."

"I know."

"You haven't had an attack in  _months._ The clinic ran test after test, we thought you were recovering." 

Mason rubs at his temples frustratedly with his free hand. "I _know_ , Meg, but it just came out of nowhere and I woke up Sarah, I'm so sor—"

“No, don't apologize. You did nothing wrong, I'm just worried. Besides, look." Megan smiles and adjusts the blanket around the baby. "Sound asleep, like nothing happened."

A small smile works its way onto his face for a few seconds before another burst of pain in his leg makes him wince and he squeezes Megan's hand just a little too tight. He lets go immediately, but her hand slips back around his wrist and she checks for a pulse like nothing happened. " _Shit._ Shit, I'm sorry."

"Your heart's racing. Should I call the hospital in the morning?"

"No," he says quickly. "No, we have a job tomorrow night, I have to be there. Gates and Ortez are going to kill each other if I don't keep them in line."

"And it can't wait?"

"No. Not this one." 

"...Ah." Megan is silent for a few seconds, holding Sarah tighter. "I don't want details, I take it."

"No, it's okay. Remember Amnesia—that club down on Fifth?" She nods. "The bounty on the owner went up yesterday. Now or never." 

"Never would be nice," she grumbles. "Then you could come into the clinic and I could take a look at you in an actual office instead of administering medication in our bedroom."

_It is years later. Mason looks at the business card in his hand, then matches it to the huge sign above the door. Right place._

_He came alone, nothing but his wallet and dog tags to prove he even exists. He moves his wheelchair inside through the sliding doors and rolls up to the front desk. "Hi, I'm...I'm here for a prosthetic fitting. Someone pointed this place out to me, said you had some deal on getting veterans set up?"_

_"No problem. Name?"_

_"Mason Wu."_

_"Just a minute, you can take a seat."_

_He doesn't even bother correcting her and just rolls out of the way of the doors. He waits ten, twenty minutes, alone and bored out of his mind, starting to regret picking up that business card, before a nurse calls his name. Then his world freezes, because he knows that voice._

_Mason looks at the door to the inner room of the clinic, and there she is. The same medic who saved him, years ago, the day he'd lost his leg._

_She meets his eyes and Mason can tell that her world freezes too._

Mason sighs. "I'll come in after this job is over. You know we need the money."

"I know, I know, I just... _fuck_." She sighs too, harder than his. "This used to be easier. Back when you were just a soldier in a clinic, I could tell you to sleep it off or take a few pills, but now...well. That's what you get for marrying a patient."

Her hand wraps around his once again. "Promise me you'll be careful. Those guys you work with? Sam, _maybe_ I'm okay with, but I don't trust Isaac. Every time you go on a job with him, I expect your name to show up in the obituaries."

"We're doing this for the right reasons, Meg. The war may be over, but there are still bad people out there, you and I know that better than anyone. And of _course_ I'll be careful. I can't leave you and Sarah alone."

_There's silence for a moment, before she looks across the waiting room awkwardly and walks over to him._

 

_"That's a face I never thought I'd see again," she murmurs. Her eyes flash over the blanket covering him from his waist down. "Left leg, right?"_

_Mason nods._

_"Alright... Well, then, let's get you set up."_

_He watches her movements in awe as she steps behind him and pushes the wheelchair back towards the door she'd come through._

_She moves his wheelchair through the hallways, past a large area where other patients are testing out all sorts of advanced prosthetic limbs. It's an interesting sight, but Mason can't quite wrap his head around it because all he can think about is that this is that medic, the same one who saved his life._

 

_"So." She breaks the silence. "It's been, what, three years? What took you so long to get a prosthetic?"_

_“Uhh.” Mason’s fingers tap frenetically on the wheelchair's armrests. "I-I don't know. The UNSC kept turning me down. Said I was too far down the list for consideration. Then a friend told me this clinic was hooking some of us up, so I thought I'd try."_

_"Right, right. They save all their good stuff for the colonels and generals who get injured. Big names. Well, that's the point of this place. We'll, uh, get set up in this room over here. Privacy and all."_

_She holds open a door and gently wheels him through, then steps into the room after him._

For a few minutes, it feels like all they do is just stare at Sarah, watching her chest rise and fall. It feels perfect, like a dream, and he's terrified that he's going to wake up any second now and this moment will be gone.

"They don't know about her, do they?" Megan says suddenly.

"No, of course not. I don't trust Isaac either."

"Good." She smiles, almost wistfully. "I don't want Sarah to grow up around that kind of world, you know? Bounty hunters, and violence, and all those assholes out there. It's better if we keep the good things like Sarah to ourselves, and I let heroes like you handle the bad stuff."

"...I'm not the only hero here, you know."

She giggles playfully. "Mason Wu, are you calling me your hero?"

"I guess I am."

_"Thank you," he blurts out, the second the door closes. "Jesus, I just—"_

_"No, thank you," she interrupts. "It was an asshole move, attacking a training base. If you hadn't gotten your cadets into that bunker before the rest of the Covenant forces had arrived, I would've been bringing home bodies instead of patients. That was my first field mission ever, and I don't think I would've stayed in the military if everyone I was supposed to save ended up dead."_

_"I—" Mason pauses. "That was your first?"_

_She nods. "Yeah, well, I ended up leaving anyway a few months later. Military life just wasn't me, you know? I still wanted to make a difference, though, and helping people like you, people who the UNSC just kinda left to their own devices, it_ _just seems like a way to go."_

_There's an awkward silence for a couple seconds._

_"Well, we'd better get you hooked up for some tests. Pulled up your file, seems like they at least gave you the prosthetic interface surgery after we left off, so you're basically good to go._ _Mason, right?"_

_"Yeah. You?"_

_She smiles, and just for a moment, the whole world seems to glow. "Megan."_

The memories gently fade, as they always do, and reality slowly bleeds into this moment, until Megan sighs.

"Let's get your leg back on. Hold Sarah."

She expertly hands the baby over to Mason and he takes her with every ounce of love in his heart, savoring this moment, this quiet moment with his wife and daughter, just in case it might be his last.

He glances up at her as she positions the prosthetic a few inches away from his leg on the chair, then immediately looks away. Experience has taught him that it's better when you're not expecting it—

She clicks it into place without warning and he bites his lip to stifle a shout, forcing himself not to make a sound. The jarring pain is there for a few seconds as the interface links his neural system to the leg, and then, just like that, the link is complete, and the pain is gone.

Mason breathes hard and slowly lets Megan help him to his feet, relief washing over him when the leg doesn't give out. 

"Okay?" she asks.

He nods. "Okay. I'm okay.”

“And there’s no pain, dizziness, fatigue, anything?”

“Megan, relax.  _I am okay,_ ” he repeats.

“...Okay." Megan's gaze flickers over her watch—he hadn't noticed her putting it on. "Well, just in time. I have to get ready, I'm opening the clinic today." She motions for Sarah. "Here, give her to me, you just get some sleep before your job. And—just in case—there’s some aspirin in the cabinet if you need it."

Reluctantly, Mason hands Sarah back to her mother and just watches them for a moment before he feels the urge to say something.

"Thank you."

"...For what?" Megan asks.

"You know exactly what. For saving me. For taking care of me."

She smiles. "Don't thank me, Mason. It's my job, and besides, why wouldn't I take care of you?"

Megan leans forward and places a kiss on his cheek.

"Don't answer that. Now go out there, drop our daughter off at daycare, and save the world. How long is that going to take?”

“I'll be home late tonight, probably. Provided the guys keep their act together."

“Then, _tomorrow_ morning, after you’ve saved the world, you’re coming to the clinic with me.” Megan adjusts Sarah and checks her watch again. “I’d tell you to break a leg, but, well…you know. Just don’t die."

Mason exhales and, on some sort of strange whim, pulls her in for a more desperately passionate kiss before he can try and understand why.

They pull apart smiling, but tired, as always. Today is another day. Another day dealing with the past, another day looking forward.

Mason runs over the plans for the day in his head as Megan starts to walk back towards the nursery. Sleep. Daycare. Then save the world. And then save the rest of the problems for the memories that come in the night.

He looks at Sarah one last time before the two of them disappear into the other room—a reminder of what he fights for. And then life moves on.

...


End file.
